Wednesday, November 23, 2011

What does being grateful look like?

All this talk about gratitude and thanksgiving....but what does it really mean? What does that look like? When December 1 rolls around will my life be any different because of gratitude?

How do I live a life of gratitude?

Here are a few ideas...many you have heard before. Pick one. Change your life.

Start a gratitude journal. Write down one thing every day you are thankful for. Or, like One Thousand Gifts, make it your goal to write 1,000 things you are grateful for.

Write thank you notes. If you are like me, you think them often...but writing them and mailing them forces you to be intentional about living a life of gratitude.

Meditate on gratitude. That is, scripture. Give thanks. To God. In all things. For all things.

Pray. Often. With the mindset of thanksgiving. Daniel got down on his knees three times a day and prayed with thanksgiving. Even though doing so would put him in the den of lions, he prayed three times a day with thankfulness...because he knew the only way to enter into His courts was with thanksgiving.

Make sure when you are 'being grateful' you know WHO it is you are grateful to. Don't just be grateful. Be grateful TO God.

Being grateful means not saying what you want to say sometimes and instead choosing to say something else. Or not saying anything at all.

Being grateful means not just seeing the cup as half full rather than half empty, it means seeing the cup as overflowing (as I posted earlier this month).

We make the choice. Every day. We can choose gratitude. Or we can choose to complain. I often make the wrong choice. But by the grace of God and because ANYTHING is possible for him who believes, I can make a different choice tomorrow.

It's NOT about determining to be more thankful. It's about asking God, through the power of His Holy Spirit, to help me choose gratitude upon wakening every day. It's not about resolving to be a more grateful person. It's about cultivating a lifestyle of gratitude every day...in a million small ways...by asking God to transform and renew my mind to be more like Christ.

That is what gratitude looks like.

Day 23: I am thankful for the men and women of faith whose lives we can look to and learn from. They were imperfect, sinful, human...and yet God chose to use their stories in His book. They teach us much and I am thankful for the lessons I can learn by reading about their lives.

In Its Time

I am a wife, a mother and a saved-by-grace writer who is learning to rest in the truth that He makes everything beautiful in its time. I write about the One whose timing and ways and plans I do not understand, but who gives joy in the midst of waiting and brings beauty out of ashes.